Exergy Analysis of Supercritical CO2 System for Marine Diesel Engine Waste Heat Recovery Application

Abstract

In this research is performed an exergy analysis of supercritical CO2 system which uses various waste heat flows from marine diesel engine to produce additional mechanical power. The performed exergy analysis contains whole system as well as each system component individually. The observed system produces useful mechanical power equal to 2299.47 kW which is transferred to the main propulsion propeller shaft. Additionally produced mechanical power by using waste heat only will reduce marine diesel engine fuel consumption and exhaust gas emissions. Main cooler has the highest exergy destruction of all system components and simultaneously the lowest exergy efficiency in the observed system, equal to 32.10% only. One of the possibilities how main cooler exergy efficiency can be increased is by decreasing water mass flow rate through the main cooler and simultaneously by increasing water temperature at the main cooler outlet. Observed system has five heat exchangers which are involved in the CO2 heating process, and it is interesting that the last CO2 heater (exhaust gas waste heat exchanger) increases the CO2 temperature more than all previous four heat exchangers. Whole analyzed waste heat recovery supercritical CO2 system has exergy destruction equal to 2161.68 kW and exergy efficiency of 51.54%. In comparison to a similar CO2 system which uses waste heat from marine gas turbine, system analyzed in this paper has approximately 12% lower exergy efficiency due to much lower waste heat temperature levels (from marine diesel engine) in comparison to temperature levels which occur at the marine gas turbine exhaust.